Plot Summary

Still banned in some countries, and suppressed in others for decades, this unique classic from Tod Browning, director of the original Dracula, remains one of the most nightmarish yet compassionate horror movies ever made. Browning cleverly draws the viewer into an enclosed carnival society (featuring real circus anatomical oddities essentially playing themselves) with its attendant bonds, codes and rituals, and then chillingly shows what happens when a “normal” human — conniving trapeze artist Olga Baclanova — breaks them with a swindling scam. A deserved cult masterpiece, this tale of the macabre, with its blood-freezing shock ending, is incredible, disturbing and, once seen, never forgotten.